


tumbling down

by Violeen



Category: SKAM (Italy)
Genre: Bromance, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Friendship, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sexuality Crisis, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24143155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violeen/pseuds/Violeen
Summary: Martino Rametta was ten, and his life was about to change in a few different ways.But no matter what life will throw at him, he'll always have Giovanni Garau by his side.
Relationships: Giovanni Garau & Martino Rametta
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I needed to write a Gio & Marti fanfiction because their friendship is iconic, and I wanted to do something pre-canon.  
> I hope you’ll like it ! Please let me know what you think of it ! I always appreciate comments and feedback.  
> And I’ll never be grateful enough to my wonderful beta-reader, @unfinishedbusinessss. Thank you so much girl, you’re a gem, truly !  
> Thank you so much for reading ! Come talk to me on tumblr : evak-elu-nicotino !

I. My life is changing and I’m so lost

Martino Rametta just turned ten when his parents started fighting all the time. He was worried.  
Staying up quite late at night whenever he heard them screaming in the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that their own son had a whole day at a new school to worry about. Marti slipped through the door to his bedroom and stood in the hallway, eyes tearing up. He hated the fights between his parents. He hated hearing them screaming insults at each other. Fighting about stuff he knew nothing about, hearing words he couldn’t possibly understand.  
He was ten, for God’s sake. His parents were supposed to comfort him at night when he was having nightmares. Comfort him about changing schools right before junior high, not fight about a woman named Paola. He didn’t know anyone named Paola, and he had a feeling that this Paola wasn’t good news. Either for him, or for his parents.

Martino already heard the word divorce several times at this point in his life, in other discussions, other contexts. He knew what it meant, and he was scared. His dad meant everything to him, and his mom’s hugs were the best. Honestly, he couldn’t possibly comprehend how much a change this big in his life could mean.  
He laid in bed that night, eyes wide open, silently praying, even though he never believed in God. His parents never took him to church, even though he heard several times that they both grew up in religious families. But since his four grandparents died before he was born, he actually never entered a church in his life.

Elisabetta and Giancarlo Rametta were the only family he had, since neither of them had siblings, and neither did Martino. His parents were his whole world, and seeing them fight like that wasn’t reassuring at all.  
Martino wasn’t a confident child. Growing up, his parents told him all the right things: he was smart, beautiful, he could do whatever he wanted if he put his mind to it. Martino wasn’t lazy per se: he was just an almost-teenager who wanted nothing more than to play calcio with the kids in his neighborhood, whenever they invited him to join them. So for now, his mind was set on football, comic books, and reading. He was rather a quiet kid. Not really shy, but not really the type of kid you’d describe at exuberant and outgoing. He kept to himself, that’s all.  
He had a rather large imagination and could spend hours in his bedroom, sometimes drawing (rather badly, in his own words), sometimes just daydreaming, staring out the window. He grew up not having too many friends, and that was really fine with him. He honestly didn’t need a lot in his life, because he had the safety of a loving family and a few friends he could count on. That was more than enough to him.

Giovanni Garau was his best friend. They met on the first day of preschool, exchanged a few words, played football during recess, and that was that. They had been the closest friends could be ever since and honestly he couldn’t quite picture his life without Gio in it. And the fact that they managed to convince both set of parents to change schools a year before going to junior high was a fact he couldn’t possibly wrap his head around.  
Last year, Martino grew several inches. He got taller than any of the other kids in his class, but not really a classy kind of tall. He was the lanky kid that almost everyone started making fun of. And on top of that, Martino had brownish-red hair. Not the kind of in-your-face red hair, but still. He had freckles from a very early age, freckles that weren’t only on his face, but on his thighs, back, shoulders and neck as well. So yeah, being the tall, lanky redhead kid with freckles wasn’t exactly the most fun thing to live through.

As always though, Gio had his back. He was the one who talked to his parents and told them that Marti was having a tough time at school, kids making fun of him all the time, stealing his lunch, his homework, sometimes even his shoes whenever he was in PE class. At first, honestly Marti’s parents didn’t really take him seriously, but Marti, who was listening from the his own bedroom, door ajar, soon realized that his parents had his best interests at heart, and so did Gio. He talked to them for almost half an hour and when they finally said, “Okay Giovanni, I promise you we will think about it, thank you for telling us.”  
Martino almost couldn’t believe it. His best friend came back to his room, smiling like a madman. He looked so smug Marti almost wanted to smack his arm, but he was so grateful to him. He got up and hugged him hard. “Let me go Marti, you’re suffocating me,” Gio laughed, crinkled eyes and a smile tugging at his lips.  
“Seriously, if they say yes, I owe you big time. Those guys just...” Martino didn’t finish his sentence. Gio sat down on the bed and patted the sheet next to him. Marti sat on the bed, head hung low.  
“Hey, Martino, whatever happens, even if we don’t change schools, I’m always gonna be there for you, don’t you worry. I’ll be by your side day and night if need be. You should know that by now, nothing’s gonna stop me from protecting you.”  
He had such a serious look on his face. Marti had no other choice than to believe him.  
Thank God for Giovanni Garau.

____________________________________________________________________________________________  
II. Being a teenager : where’s the handbook ?

On his twelfth birthday, Martino wakes up to the smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen, and his mother bustling around, moving pots and pans from one side to another. He enters the room yawning, scratching his hair which sticks in every direction. His mom smiles up at him, and kisses him fondly on the cheek. “Happy birthday honey, I hope you’re gonna have an amazing day! Auguri!”  
He smiles up at her. The divorce didn’t go smoothly, but his dad behaved like a complete jackass.  
Martino is a little mad at him, to be honest. And most days, his mother is crying in her bedroom and the worst thing is: he can hear her, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So he huddles up into his bedsheets pulling up the blanket above his head, putting his earphones on, and falls asleep listening to some random songs.  
Being twelve isn’t exactly easy for Martino. Gio is starting to really show interest in girls and Martino just isn’t interested. He really can’t see the point of them: long hair, frilly clothes and pink shoes, sometimes lip gloss or even worse, lipstick. But he sees Gio’s gaze lighting up whenever he sees one, trying to chat them up, strike up a conversation, manage to get a laugh or two out of them.  
Just being his charming self, and sure, having baby blue eyes doesn’t hurt.

The girls, to be fair, seem quite interested to Martino as well. One or two of them actually talked to him once or twice and Marti’s gotta admit, he kinda understands what Gio sees in them. Some of them are pretty. But at the end of the day, Martino’s better off reading or listening to music. Or better yet, talking to Gio for hours and hours on end. He doesn’t mind that his best friend doesn’t have a girlfriend, to be honest, because when he will, he just knows that everything will be different.  
He’s not ready yet for their friendship to change.  
So he clings on to Gio like he’s his rock, which he kinda is.

One morning, Martino’s waiting for his best friend in front of his house, checking his watch every now and then. He frowns upon seeing that it’s already past 8:30 and Gio’s nowhere in sight. He knocks on the door, only to have his mom tell him that he already left for school. And then she adds, with a smile tugging at her lips, the sentence that’s gonna make Marti sad for the whole day.  
“He was with a brunette. I think her name is Laura, or something like that. Didn’t he tell you?”  
Marti smiles, nods, and wishes Mamma Garau a good day, before turning on his heel, on the verge of tears. How could Gio have stood him up like that? And more importantly, what was he doing with that girl from their class... Laura?  
He shows up at school, puts down his bag next to his chair, anger boiling inside of him. He bites the inside of his cheek as the teacher gets up in front of the class and starts the lesson of the day.  
Ignoring Gio’s repeated whispers to his right, Martino tries to concentrate on whatever la Prof. Marca is saying. But for whatever reason, his ears are ringing, and his cheeks are flush.  
His hands are somewhat shaking and he knows he has a right to be angry at his best friend for standing him up for some girl he barely knows. Although, deep down inside, Martino has a feeling this isn’t the typical reaction you have when a close friend of the same gender gets a crush on a girl. His stomach drops a little, and he shakes his head, trying to think about something else.  
Anything else but the fact that the feeling he recognizes in his gut is called...  
Jealousy.  
Martino wakes in the middle of the night, drenched in his own sweat, and he frowns, disgusted by his own smell. He gets up, changes pajamas, puts on deodorant, and even takes the time to actually change his sheets. He focuses on the tasks, meticulously. His brain is reeling, heart beating so fast he was actually scared of having a panic attack. He has to forget the dream he just had, nothing makes sense. He goes into the bathroom, glances up at the clock.  
4:17AM.  
And he has a big English test tomorrow. He needs to get some sleep before heading to school, or his mother will let him know how she’s furious with him for getting a bad grade. A grade he knows he’ll get if he doesn’t go back to sleep as soon as possible.

He turns off the lights and lies in his bed, eyes wide open, willing sleep to just come and take him peacefully.  
Half an hour later, Martino’s brain gone to places he just hates so much. He’s in the middle crisis of self-loathing, when he can’t take it anymore. He gets up, and slips into the bathroom, taking a glass of water, trying to think about something else. Honestly, anything else would be better than this torture.

Marti knows that generally speaking, teenage years are the toughest to get through. Sometimes identity and sexuality crisis can happen. It can be the time of your life when you start to figure out... stuff. But he really can’t wrap his head around the fact that he just had this dream. A dream that makes him recoil every time he thinks about it.  
God, what did he do in a previous life to deserve such a karma... Honestly?!  
At 6:30AM, when he finally gives up and decides that he won’t get back to sleep before his alarm goes off, he gets up again and prepares himself some breakfast. He’s in the middle of his second piece of toast when he hears his mom gets up as well. She enters the kitchen and makes a beeline for the coffee machine. Marti would gladly do the same, if only he was allowed to drink coffee. His mom has decided that twelve years old isn’t old enough and that it could mess with his still developing brain and body.  
She looks over to her son, smiles, then notices the dark circles under his eyes. She puts down her coffee mug and sits across from him, worry written all over her face.  
“Everything alright honey? You look like you haven’t slept at all...”  
Martino sighs, and runs a hand over his own face. “No Mamma, don’t worry, I just had a...nightmare, and woke up drenched in sweat. Couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. Nothing to worry about.”  
His mom looks worried though. He tries to smile reassuringly, but fails miserably. He’s not really feeling up to going to school today, but he really doesn’t have a choice.  
He puts his brave face on, gets up, brushes his teeth, puts on his favorite shirt, and grabs his backpack before giving his mom a kiss on the cheek.  
“Bye Mamma, have a good day, and please stop worrying. Okay?”  
She bites her lip, and Marti smiles at her. “Hey don’t worry, I’ll sleep better tonight, that’s all!  
Nothing to worry about! It’s not the end of the world. Stop worrying and go to work, you’re gonna be late,” he says, before closing the door of their flat behind him.  
He takes a deep breath and exhales shakily, eyes closed.  
No time to dwell on his dream from last night, which is still in the back of his mind.

Goddammit, this day is gonna be a long one.

____________________________________________________________________________________________  
III. Don’t ask me that

Martino’s fourteenth birthday was celebrated a few weeks ago, when his mother drops the topic he certainly didn’t expect in the middle of his carbonara pasta. He made it from scratch, since his mom lost her interest for anything cooking related a few months after his dad left.  
Martino’s actually quite good at it and his carbonara tastes amazing. He’s enjoying it, when he hears Mamma Rametta clearing her throat, which is NEVER a good sign. Generally it means that she’s getting ready to talk about a delicate subject. He lifts an eyebrow, curious as to what topic she wants to discuss.  
“Martino, you know, fourteen is an important age. What I mean by that, is that a lot of young people nowadays...” She interrupts herself, clearly not at ease discussing the subject. Marti looks like a deer in headlights; he’s frozen in his seat. He takes a deep breath and braces himself for what’s about to come at him.  
“You need to protect yourself, honey,” his mom finally says, and he groans from embarrassment.  
“Mom, please, can we PLEASE not have this discussion?! I beg you!” he says through gritted teeth, closing his eyes.  
God, this is the worst time to talk about this.  
He’s already dealing with the million disturbing thoughts he’s having about...well, girls, and the fact that apparently they’re just not that appealing to him. He’s afraid to dwell on that thought, so he just buries himself into drawing and reading. That’s a good enough solution to his problem for now.  
It works... for now, at least.  
She shakes her head, the wrinkles around her eyes crease a little more. She looks serious now.  
“Martino, girls and boys your age are generally very... enthusiastic and go quite far sometimes...without using condoms, or any idea of what they’re doing. So I want you to be prepared, and to never do something you’re not ready for.”  
“Oh my God Mamma, really? Are we really having this conversation now, in the middle of dinner? Dinner that I made from scratch?”  
“Martino, come on. You’re not giving me much to go on here.”  
“No, because I don’t want to! This is my private life you’re hinting at and I’m not discussing it with you.”  
He pushes back his plate on the table, and inhales deeply. No need to get worked up over this kind of conversation, he thinks to himself, she’s just looking out for him. He knows that, deep down, but he really doesn’t want to think about it. Any of it. Girls, sex, nothing. It’s not like he has a girlfriend anyway.  
Gio is much more advanced in that area, he noticed. He has had a girlfriend for a few months now, that brunette, Laura. Sure, she’s nice enough, pretty and funny, but what is it with girls exactly? He just can’t see what the big deal is, honestly!

In front of him, Elisabetta Rametta lifts an eyebrow, and just smiles at him, before putting her hand on his.  
“Is there anyone you like at school?”  
Martino gets up so fast his head starts to spin a little. He would run away from the kitchen, but the flat is not that big and he has nowhere else to go.  
“Please stop Mamma, te l’ho già detto, I already told you, I’m not discussing it with you.” She smiles knowingly, and it annoys the crap out of him. “Oh so you like someone, don’t you?”  
That’s it. He’s had enough of this nonsense. He storms out of the kitchen, leaving dishes, plates, glasses, cutlery, everything on the table, and just stomps into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. Thank God his dad actually put a lock on his door, so he’s able to just put his headphones on and ignore his mom trying to talk some sense into him through the door. He puts on music, volume up, and just lays on his bed, eyes shut.  
God, he wishes he could be anywhere else right now.

____________________________________________________________________________________________  
IV. Crumbling down

Martino’s fifteen and he’s struggling like hell. Gio’s drifting further and further from him with every day that passes. He’s madly in love with Laura and Marti hates it with every fiber of his being. Terrified to uncover what it could possibly mean, he spends most of his time daydreaming. He avoids his best friend at all costs, which isn’t really hard. Laura and Gio spend all their time together anyway. They seem to be kissing every time Martino looks at them, and it makes him want to throw up so bad.  
At home, Martino’s mom dropped the subject of sex, and he is relieved to no end. He found a pack of condoms on his bedside table one day after school, with a note folded and taped to it. He opened it to find a somewhat endearing speech from Mamma Rametta, saying how much she understands that talking about it can be difficult, but that she’s here if he needs to talk. And that in the meantime, he needs to look after himself and to use condoms if he wants to have sex with someone.  
Marti sits on his bed, staring at the piece of paper, puzzled.  
He notices how his mom didn’t use the term girlfriend or girl, in her note. He might be reading too much into it, but the weight in his chest lifts a little.

Truth is, Martino Rametta has the biggest problem of all time. Last month, he stumbled upon an article which made his breath catch in his chest, and his heart skip a beat. His mom left a newspaper on the table, right before heading to work. It was Saturday, 13th of March. He remembers the date oh so clearly.  
His eyes fixed on the bold letters of the title: “Italians progressively changing their mind on same-sex marriage: a change incoming?”  
To his horror, Martino felt tears well up in his eyes, and he closed the paper forcefully. He hated this stupid newspaper, hated Italians, hated himself. He didn’t want to deal with it, with any of it.  
He just wanted his life to stay the same. He wanted to have a girlfriend, to be straight, to be normal. He wanted to fade into the crowd, not stand out because he was different than his classmates. He didn’t want to really address that question, the one that had been buried in the back of his mind for several months now.  
It all started in the locker room. They were on their way out of the PE class. Marti sat down on the bench, still catching his breath from all extra running laps they had to do. Only Gio and himself, just because Boccia decided that they were talking too much during class. Everyone had already left, of course By the time they reached the changing room, Gio scoffed dramatically,  
“Boccia is really a stronzo, making us run all these extra laps! Seriously, who the fuck does he think he is?”  
Marti chuckled. “The gym teacher, maybe?” he jokes lightly, removing his socks before they get all wet. The floor is disgusting as fuck. The other guys probably got out of the showers still dripping wet. They made a mess and didn’t bother to clean up after themselves.  
Marti gets up from the bench and his foot starts slipping. He screams, arms waggling, trying to steady himself, but to no avail. An arm slips around his middle, and puts him upright. Martino blushes a deep red when he realizes that Gio is squeezed against him, torso against his back, thighs against thighs, his warm hand right above his boxers. He can feel him everywhere and it’s too much, all off a sudden.  
Fuck fuck fuck!

“Thanks mate,” he mutters under his breath. He curses internally, almost runs to the showers, eager to drop his boiling thoughts under the water.  
“Everything okay Marti?” he hears Gio’s voice behind him before he steps into the shower stall.  
He closes his eyes, back to him. “Yeah,” he croaks, “almost fell and can’t seem to catch my breath! Talk about being in bad shape,” he laughs, trying to drown his shame and guilt.  
Stepping under the water and cries silently under the shower. He knows he’s known for quite some time now. He just knows that he’s attracted to guys. He just knows. The way he ignore girls and focuses on boys isn’t just a phase. Tries so hard to feel something for girls. Tries to get excited at the prospect of spending some time alone with one of them. But no matter how hard he tries, it’s still not working.  
Nobody has touched him before Gio. It’s not even a romantic gesture. Gio just caught him before he fell face first on the changing room floor, which could be a metaphor for his whole life, at this point. Gio is being an amazing best friend and Marti’s here, thinking about him that way.  
He can’t do this. He has no right to. He has no right to imagine Gio in his arms, in his bed, trying to kiss him senseless.  
Oh, he definitely can’t go there while showering next to his best friend.  
Naked best friend, his brain not so helpfully supplies.  
He groans into the crook of his elbow and closes his eyes again.  
He has to do something, anything, to try and prevent this from happening.  
He can’t be gay, right?

____________________________________________________________________________________________  
V. Please send help.

Martino is sitting on his couch, frowning at his biology textbook. His brain hurts, his legs hurt because he played calcio for several hours with the neighbors. His heart hurts because he now has a huge crush on his best friend, and everything sucks, really.  
Plus, he really hates biology.  
And he needs help.  
He grabs his phone, texts Gio, and drops his textbook next to him before closing his eyes. The flat is quiet, his mom has picked up a few extra hours at work and Martino’s grateful for the time he can spend alone. He needs it more than ever these days. His behavior has changed, slowly.  
He’s falling into patterns he hates, like lying about anything and everything. He’s hiding and he hates it, but for now that’s all he can do, really.  
Self-loathing has become his best friend; sadly replacing Gio. Gio who is supportive as ever, being the best friend Martino doesn’t deserve. Every time Marti shows up late at school, Gio is at the entrance, waiting for him with a smile tugging at his lips, as if nothing has changed. As if Martino doesn’t blush whenever he thinks about Giovanni. As if he doesn’t want to kiss his best friend as long as he can.  
As if Martino isn’t betraying their friendship.  
Marti sighs again, and picks up his phone. A text from Gio. He freezes when he reads it. “I’m on my way, I need to talk to you.”  
Martino closes his eyes and fights through a panic attack. 

Gio knows, he knows. 

He’s coming here to yell at him, to insult him, to call him names and to ask him to never talk to him again. Oh God, this is the end, Marti thinks, full-on panicking now.  
He gets up, wants to scream into a pillow, wants to run away from here. He wants to hide and die in a corner, where no one can find him. He doesn’t deserve a friend like Giovanni Garau, and now Gio knows it too. Marti cries into his own shirt, because he doesn’t know what else to do.  
He hates himself with a passion, and he wishes he could vanish into thin air. A knock on the door, and before Martino can even answer, Gio opens it and finds his best friend sobbing on the couch.  
“Hey, Marti,” he runs towards the redhead, who’s crying like a child.  
“Please, don’t hate me,” he says, swallowing his guilt and grief. “Please, don’t leave me.” Gio flops down on the couch next to him and hugs him without saying anything. What the hell happened to his best friend? Who made him this miserable?  
“Martino, talk to me. You can’t go on like this, you have to talk to someone, or else you’re gonna have a breakdown. I’m here, I’m your best friend, talk to me mate!” Gio whispers against his best friend’s shoulder.  
“I think I have a problem,”Marti whispered back, eyes still closed, trying to calm down. He doesn’t want to talk about it, not really, but he feels like he doesn’t have a choice. It’s either this or he’s gonna end up crazy.

Life sucks right now, and maybe he shouldn’t do this, maybe he should keep to himself, but the words fall out of his lips before he can even help it.  
“Gio... I think I don’t like girls.”  
A beat.  
Marti looks up at his best friend, who’s still snuggled up against him, body entirely turned towards him, and he can feel him smile against his shoulder.  
“Okay,” Gio says slowly, his eyes sincere, and full of affection. “Why do you say you have a problem then?”  
Martino feels tears welling up, and he swallows against the lump in his throat. A weight is lifted off his chest, and he feels like he can breathe again. “Gio, come on. You know as well as I do that it’s gonna be painful. And hard. And people are gonna hate me. And call me names.”  
Before he can even finish his sentence, Giovanni stands up, looking angry. “Like hell they will, Marti! Do you think I won’t be there for you? Do you think I’d leave you once I knew that you were gay?”  
Marti recoils. He hates that word. It embodies hate and fear, and he’s scared of it, more than he’s willing to admit.  
“Don’t say that,” Gio says, softly. He flops back down on the couch next to Martino, and grabs his shoulder.  
“Don’t think for a second there that I’m gonna leave you alone to fight this through. What kind of a friend do you think I am?”  
Marti smiles through his tears.  
He’s exhausted, all of a sudden. Coming out for the first time of his life, to Giovanni Garau, his best friend, was definitely the right choice.


End file.
